Life Technologies Fires Latest Sequencing Salvo
Another week, another drop in the cost of whole-genome sequencing. The latest announcement comes from Life Technologies, which yesterday announced the launch of its SOLiD 4 sequencing system. The details of the announcement are well-covered by GenomeWeb and Matthew Herper of Forbes.com.
In brief, the SOLiD 4 generates 100 gigabases of data per run at a cost of $6,000 per genome, a cost that appears to account solely for the consumables and does not include the cost of the machine or of interpreting all of that sequence data. According to GenomeWeb, Life is also promising an upgrade to its system – SOLiD 4hq – in the second half of 2010 which it expects to triple the data output at half of the cost: 300 megabases per run, $3,000 per sequence.
As for the impact of Life’s SOLiD 4 announcement, Matthew Herper hits the nail on the head:
But although the news is good for Life and will keep it in the game as the price of decoding the genetic code continues to drop, the specs of this new machine don’t seem good enough to upset Illumina’s place as the first choice of geneticists. “It’s a solid improvement, but I don’t think this changes the game,” says Isaac Ro, an analyst at Leerink Swan who follows both companies.
